Pat Buchanan: The Sonny Liston of Politics
While Jesse Ventura Melts Down

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IT WAS a curious week.

While reading The New Republic, I immensely enjoyed an item from
its “Notebook” section that described a piece of legislation
friend-of-the-working-man Kennedy put before the House. His bill would
entitle those Americans who purchase a yacht “more than 50 feet in
length [to] a tax credit equal to 20 percent of the price of the boat,
up to a limit of $2 million.” Sounds good to me: any tax cut makes
sense. But, as TNR put it, “Who, then, speaks for the forgotten middle
class of 40-foot yacht owners? The Republicans?”

I then switched from C-SPAN to watch the 6 a.m. rebroadcast of Brit Hume’s
excellent Fox Special Report from the previous night and was delighted
when he showed a clip of Geraldo Rivera, at an Hispanic gathering in DC,
defending Bill Clinton’s politically calculated clemency for 16 FALN
members.

Rivera: “In an America where so-called conservative politicians can
support clemency, or at least more lenient treatment, for antiabortion
violence, or for the IRA, or for Israeli spies, 311 members of Congress
voted to condemn the president for doing what we begged him to do.
Ninety-three members of the United States Senate, without a single vote
in opposition [actually, 95 voted in favor, two voted in
opposition—Senators Daniel Akaka and Paul Wellstone—and three did not
vote], voted like those members of the House did before them to condemn
our president for releasing the Puerto Rican radicals. Where were those
same sanctimonious Senate voices when our government treated as royalty
such prominent former terrorists as Menachem Begin and Yasir Arafat?
Where was their outrage when we reopened relations with Vietnam, a land
where the blood of 50,000 of our fellow citizens, many of them from
Puerto Rico, still stains the soil?”

The Fox panel of Fred Barnes, Morton Kondracke and Mara Liasson simply
cracked up at Rivera’s histrionics, with Kondracke saying he was
“speechless” and, “Wow, this guy is a total shill for Bill Clinton.”

Hume dismissed Geraldo, as most people do, by saying, “I don’t recall
Geraldo as a big supporter of the Vietnam War either, but anyway, he’s a
sweet guy personally.”

And, to further digress, David Talbot’s endorsement of Warren Beatty for
president in Salon on Sept. 2 is ample evidence that this Wavy-Gravy
online magazine is of peripheral interest at best. After the obligatory
(and incorrect) nod to John McCain as a worthy “outsider,” Talbot drops
another tab of LSD and gets down to business: “Beatty is the man for the
moment. He should drop his coy antics and jump into the race... Will he
be rejected as too liberal by American voters? Perhaps. But the issues
he is championing can cut across party lines, and if he runs his
campaign properly, Beatty can have strong appeal to the country’s
growing base of independent-minded voters. He could just as easily run
as the Reform Party candidate as a Democrat... At this point in his
career, nothing that awaits Beatty on the lots of Warners or Paramount
could equal the challenge of a presidential race, with the upstart
candidate seizing the opportunity to lower his lance against the growing
specter of American ‘plutocracy.’ Commit yourself, Warren. It will be
the role of a lifetime.”

Well, I suppose we should all be concerned as Talbot about Beatty’s
flagging film career. But if the Salon editor thinks that a pampered
actor who dabbles in politics—unlike Ronald Reagan, who was governor of
California for eight years, as well as active in the Goldwater
movement—can adequately handle the job of president, he really is as
deranged as most of the content on his website indicates.

Speaking of Salon and glue-factory candidates, Greil Marcus included an
astoundingly tasteless item in his “Real Life Rock Top 10” of Sept. 7.
He quoted from a daily newspaper, under the headline “The Best News of
the Week: Denver Post, Aug. 22”: “Universal Records has confirmed that
Spin Doctors lead singer Chris Barron has been diagnosed with a rare
paralysis of his vocal cords. Barron is meeting with doctors who have
indicated that he may never regain the full use of his voice.” Greil’s a
helluva guy, isn’t he.

Later, I sat by the computer, amazed at Maureen
Dowd’s latest column in The New York Times. Flighty Maureen didn’t get
to me—actually, it was one of her best efforts of late, a deft send-up
of Donald Trump and his otherworldly ego. While Pat Buchanan enjoys the
last hours of his Christmas Day, attention-wise, Dowd concentrated on
Trump, just one more notable who Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura hopes will
run against Buchanan for the Reform Party presidential nomination.
Ventura, although he speaks well on television, with that man’s man
common sense that Americans eat up, is increasingly becoming a national
joke, but I’ll get to that later.

Trump was in prime form for Dowd, offering the following print-bites:
“To be blunt, people would vote for me. They just would.” Why? Dowd
asks. “Maybe because I’m so good looking. I don’t know. Larry King calls
and says, ‘Do my show. I get my highest ratings when you’re on.’”
One assumes Trump was speaking tongue-in-cheek—although you never
know—but his comments on other politicians were very candid. He said
Buchanan is “medieval”—I’ll buy that. Bill Bradley “puts me to sleep.
And he was the architect of a tax plan that cost many more billions than
it saved.” Hmm, maybe Bradley’s started to peak. I’d go for that too,
but unfortunately I think Trump is ahead of the curve on this one.

He’s not a Hillary Clinton fan, again speaking MUGGERese: “The concept
of the listening tour is ridiculous. People want ideas. Do you think
Winston Churchill, when he was stopping Hitler, went around listening?”

Now, that comment got me thinking that maybe Trump really is
contemplating a run against Buchanan: After all, Pat-Pat the Water Rat
is on the record saying that Hitler should’ve been appeased more, not
less, and that some of his ideas were pretty dang sensible.

Trump likes Rudy Giuliani, which is no surprise: “He’s made New York the
hottest city in the world. If he gets beaten, it’s virtually unfair.”

Overstatement, of course, since New York has been the “hottest city” for
most of the century, but we’ll take his admiration at face value, since
Rudy’s been berry, berry good to the man too many people still call The
Donald.

Danny Hellman

My favorite snipe, for professional reasons, and also because I like
honesty, concerned Talk: “The magazine looks terrible. Elizabeth Taylor
on the cover? Crazy. At least they didn’t use a current picture of her.”
Back to Ventura. Richard Berke, probably the Times’ most nakedly biased
liberal reporter, wrote a story for Sept. 19 about the former wrestler
and his squabble with Buchanan and Ross Perot, the Texan pip-squeak
whose main ambition in his dotage is to trip up anybody named Bush.
Berke’s take was typically myopic, presenting Ventura as a surging
political force who could prevent Buchanan from winning the Reform Party
nomination, even though Perot is already in the process of rigging it in
the anti-Semite’s favor. This was an article that would’ve been far more
plausible a month ago, before Ventura had started to turn himself into a
national joke.

Consider how the Governor has melted down: He first touted Lowell
Weicker for president, an old hack who might garner 2 percent in the
general election; he then provoked a fight with the St. Paul Pioneer
Press, objecting to their adult advertising and said he’d cancel his
subscriptions at his offices, a threat he later rescinded. Next he got
mad at Playboy for moving up an interview with him a month; he told the
Minneapolis Star-Tribune that “It’s a business move on their part. They
know the [December] millennium issue’s gonna sell big. Now they figure
they can capitalize on me in the November issue. I don’t like that they
gained the interview under a false premise and turned right around and
basically lied to me.” Asked by the Strib reporter what he said in the
interview, Ventura responded that he “couldn’t remember.”

Ventura, who’s the putative leader of the Reform Party, has been so busy
with his own celebrity that he’s let Buchanan, Pat Choate (Perot’s
running mate in ’96) and Ridiculous Ross grasp his control. But Berke,
missing that Ventura is fast losing his grip, if not his mind, writes:

“Last week, Mr. Ventura’s role as the power broker in third-party
politics was unmistakable. After Patrick J. Buchanan all but said he
would abandon the Republican Party to run for President on the Reform
Party ticket, attention turned to Mr. Ventura.” Unmistakable is correct,
mostly for his inept reaction. Instead of working, quietly, behind the
scenes to crush Buchanan, whose social views are anathema to most Reform
Party members, Ventura was busy shooting off his mouth to Berke. One of
his more fantastic claims was, “I see myself closest to Abraham Lincoln.

We’re alike in many ways. We were both wrestlers. And we’re both
six-foot-four.” Unlike Trump, you get the feeling that Ventura is not
being facetious.

Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden, one of the few national politicians
willing to speak negatively about Ventura, told the Times reporter: “In
four years, he’ll be where our boy from Texas is—only without the
money.” Ventura’s reaction: “Who does that guy think he is?... Go out
and ask your average teen-ager today who Jesse Ventura is and who Joe
Biden is. What I’ve accomplished is more than he ever will.”

I don’t like Biden’s politics at all: He’s a lockstep liberal whose
conduct at the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings was inexcusable;
he’s supported Bill Clinton when a true man of conscience wouldn’t.
However, in his personal life Biden has faced tremendous adversity and
has “accomplished” far more than the showboat from Minnesota. Just weeks
after Biden was elected to the Senate, at the age of 29, his wife and
infant daughter were killed in a car crash that also critically injured
his two young sons. A premature widower, Biden would commute every day
from Delaware to Washington, and then back again, to be with his sons.

In addition, he successfully recovered from a brain aneurysm that almost
took his life in 1988. In my book, those triumphs over tragedy rate far
higher than success in the wrestling ring.

There was more arresting political news in the papers on Sunday: the New
York Post’s report that Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan will soon endorse
Bradley over Al Gore, just another sign that unless the former Knick
commits some egregious gaffe this fall, odds are now in his favor to
defeat the Vice President for the Democratic presidential nomination.

That other Pat

The groundswell that started about a month ago for Bradley will not stop
soon. Expect more endorsements from top Democratic officeholders,
analysts and rainmakers. And, of course, the inevitable nod from Jann
Wenner at Rolling Stone, who never lets a “movement” escape his
entrepreneurial star-schmoozing instincts.

This is not good news for George W. Bush. Bradley’s strong poll numbers
right now are indicative of the American public’s demand for something
positive to happen in government and politics, an antidote to “Clinton
fatigue.” That’s one of the reasons Bush has maintained such enormous
leads over Gore, which, in turn, makes his astonishing fundraising
possible. The brilliance of the Bradley campaign is that it is entirely
predicated on the prevalent desire for leadership and a president who
isn’t sleazy. Gore, as I’ve been repeating almost week after week for
two years, is Clinton’s last victim: He’s done. Back to sloppin’ the
hogs and hummin’ Patsy Cline tunes.

The New York Times, still covering politics as if it were 1996, refuses
to believe that Gore is in trouble. The paper is so anxious to prop up
the Veep that Adam Clymer’s Sept. 20 report from San Francisco on Gore’s
campaign contained this incredible lead sentence: “It is sometimes
overlooked in the Bill Bradley buzz from Washington, but Vice President
Al Gore is a formidable candidate for President.” Well, yeah: He’s only
been collecting chits from fellow Democrats for the past seven years.
That would make him “formidable.”

But the “buzz” for Bradley isn’t confined to Washington. Gore is in dire
straits in New Hampshire and New York, and despite Clymer’s claim of his
popularity in California, that state could easily swing to Bradley.

Clymer wrote that the highlight of a fundraiser in Los Altos “might have
been Tipper Gore sitting in on drums with a band descended from the
Grateful Dead.” In addition, who is the first Democrat quoted on Gore’s
strength? Why, Tom Hayden, the goofy state senator who wouldn’t rate a
sentence in a main story about presidential politics four years ago.

Hayden, who’s said he could endorse either Gore or Beatty, told Clymer:
“I don’t feel a Bradley swell except among entertainment people who are
basketball freaks. Of course, that’s a base.”

What the mainstream press doesn’t understand is that Bradley is
deliberately boring, trying to stay under the radar so that he crests at
the right time. If Bush is lucky—and lately, Bradley’s tack to the left,
even echoing McGovern politics, is a positive sign—the former senator
will peak too early and get cocky. Already, Bradley has annoyed Jesse
Jackson by saying that sexual orientation should be included in the 1964
Civil Rights Act. Jackson, Mr. Rainbow Coalition, fears that might lead
to Congress reversing certain rights for blacks. I don’t get that logic,
but no one ever said that Jackson wasn’t a loon.

Jackson

Bush should ladle out praise for Bradley, express admiration for his
character and hype his chances for defeating Gore. That might mess up
Bradley’s strategy.

Meanwhile, in the Sept. 14 New York Times, the supposedly objective
“paper of record” demonstrated once again its manipulative and dishonest
practice of political reporting. A teaser on the front page, referring
to an inside article on Bush by Frank Bruni, read, in part: “But what
political analysts, some of Mr. Bush’s advisers and Mr. Bush himself say
he must still do is to prove to voters that he has the maturity and
poise to lead the nation. Mr. Bush admits that is ‘a huge step.’”
This is a completely inaccurate, and I believe intentional, distortion
of what Bush told Bruni. Not once did the candidate mention the loaded
word “maturity.” This is slanted “news” coverage at its worst. What Bush
did tell Bruni was, “It’s a huge step. And in all of my speeches, I say
it’s a big step... I think the real question, though, and the important
question that the American people are going to look at and answer is: Is
the person prepared? You know, more importantly, is the person prepared
to make the big decisions for America? That’s the big stage. And that’s
the fundamental question—of trust.”

In fact, the word “maturity” is also not found in one of the quotes from
Bush’s inner circle. And while Bruni—grudgingly, one suspects—writes
that the Texas Governor is running an unusual campaign, trying to reach
out to voters not normally courted by Republican presidential
candidates, he also says that Bush’s advisers “acknowledge” that he has
to prove that “there is something real behind those words.” Not one
analyst or adviser is actually quoted to that effect. You’d never see
the Times questioning the “maturity” of Gore or McCain, although both
have made startling remarks that should give voters pause. Gore’s
hypocrisy on the tobacco issue and his score of silly gaffes are subject
to questions of maturity, just as McCain’s off-color public jokes are.
Does the Times really believe that Bush, a 53-year-old man, who has a
stable family life and has twice been elected to lead the nation’s
second biggest state, is “immature”?

In a long interview with the Washington Times’ Ralph Z. Hallow,
published on Sept. 20, Bush outlined his first priorities should he be
elected president next year. “[I’d] call the leaders of the Congress and
talk about how we’re going to take care of the elderly by reforming
Social Security and Medicare. Secondly, [I’d] talk about strengthening
the military. Thirdly, [I’d] talk about cutting taxes.”

I’ve put off writing about Pat Buchanan in this entry for as long as
possible, but he’s not to be ignored. For now. Aside from Hurricane
Floyd, Buchanan has owned the media in the last week, with every pundit
evaluating his all-but-certain third-party candidacy in the general
election. While liberal writers are tickled that he could tilt the
presidency to Bradley or Gore, the backlash is now starting. Buchanan,
to put it charitably, is the Sonny Liston of presidential contenders: a
rich, spoiled, sore loser who doesn’t realize that the era of Angry
White Men is over. His opportunistic alliance with the Reform Party is
bizarre: He just wants their money. Not only does he disagree with every
social stance of the party—abortion, gays in the military (heck, gays in
general) and school prayer, just for starters—but he’s now mixed up with
the likes of Lenora Fulani (former chair of the extreme left-wing New
Alliance party), Ventura and Perot.

Novak

The following exchange between conservative columnist Robert Novak and
Fulani on the Sept. 14 edition of Crossfire shows just how mixed-up the
Reform Party is.

Novak: “[Y]ou had a statement earlier this year in which you were
talking about Senator Jesse Helms, and you said he ‘is considered a
champion of the anti-affirmative action, anti-gay, anti-labor,
anti-abortion agenda. He has been a strategic commander of the culture
wars that forced American liberalism onto the ropes.’ Being really
honest and accurate, that could have been said about Pat Buchanan as
easy as Jesse Helms, couldn’t it?”

Fulani: “Absolutely. And one of the exciting things about Mr. Buchanan
considering coming into the Reform Party, is that we’re talking about
the possibility of moving beyond those cultural wars, in the way that
politics is played, and building a party that is nonideological. He’s
leaving a partisan party, if he chooses to do so, to become part of what
I think is a new populist movement in this country.”

Got that?

Let me repeat the obvious: Buchanan is an anachronism. He’s a gifted
orator, a skilled debater and a man who has passionate beliefs. But his
anti-immigration, anti-free trade and fanatic pro-life views only appeal
to a limited segment of the United States’ citizens in 1999. If you
ain’t white, Christian and ready to return to Teddy Roosevelt’s era,
Buchanan has no use for you as a person or as your president. His shrill
campaign speeches, punctuated by jokes and historical references, will
soon wear thin, as his real message sinks in. When the general election
begins in earnest next fall, with voters (rather than just the media)
focused, Buchanan’s poll numbers will drop. I doubt that he can win more
than 6 or 7 percent of the vote.

Read the following excerpts from Buchanan’s speech at the Ames, IA,
straw poll in August and tell me that anyone but the most rabid,
hard-core reactionary will vote for him. After touting his Ronald Reagan
credentials (who never made abortion a key issue in his two elections),
Buchanan said: “Roe v. Wade is an ugly scar across the face of America.

We got to remove that scar and then G-d will hear this people, and He
will heal our land... You know, the party of Reagan…was a party of
working men and women in this country, of Teamsters and steelworkers and
textile workers. Yet now we see the farmers of Iowa in a depression...
Our economic independence is being lost and our sovereignty is being
eroded... What is the party of Reagan doing? Sacrificing the working men
and women of this country on the altars of NAFTA and GATT and the World
Trade Organization in Clinton and Gore’s New World Order! What are we
doing, this party of ours? Well, let me tell you—to all those
internationalists and globalists, whether they be in Washington or up at
the U.N. or in Bonn or Paris or Tokyo or New York, let me tell you
something. When I raise my hand to take that oath of office as president
of the United States, your New World Order comes crashing down!”

After presenting his bona fides as an isolationist, Buchanan continues:
“We got our armed forces spread all over the country, my friends, spread
all over the world. They’re defending borders in Korea, in Kuwait, in
Kosovo. What we need to do is rebuild, rearm and replenish that military
and bring them home. And if you want to defend a border, why don’t they
try defending the southern border of the United States of America!”

This is entertaining as sitcom rhetoric, as a relief from the waffling
of the Clinton administration, but it’s an act that’s about to be
canceled.

Although a few dotty conservatives such as the National Review’s John
O’Sullivan are egging Buchanan on, deluding themselves into thinking, as
O’Sullivan wrote in the Sept. 13 issue of NR, that his capture of the
Reform Party nomination would let him “shed all the social baggage of
Republicanism—its reputation as the self-interested ideology of the
country-clubber and the coupon-clipper,” this isn’t a majority view.

Reed

After all, the Christian Coalition’s former leader Ralph Reed is backing
Bush; the editor of The Washington Times, Wesley Pruden, wrote on Sept.
14, “Today, the world. Tomorrow, Rockville. Nothing’s sadder to watch
than a man who won’t leave when his 15 minutes of fame are up.”

Last Wednesday, on Hardball, William Bennett was fairly definitive on
the relative insignificance of Buchanan leaving the GOP, as well as the
caveman’s nonsensical claim that there’s no difference between the two
major parties. It might be news to Buchanan, but there’s a huge gulf
between Teddy Kennedy, David Bonior and Tom Daschle, as compared to Don
Nickles, Lindsey Graham and George W. Bush. When Chris Matthews asked if
the Republican nominee would suffer as a result of Buchanan’s defection,
Bennett answered: “Might lose some votes, but I think we should let him
go. I think it’s time. Look, he’s a fading figure in the Republican
party... The Republican Party may not be sufficiently pro-life for Pat
Buchanan, but it’s a lot more pro-life than the Reform Party.”

Then Matthews asked what the GOP should do to keep Buchanan among its
ranks. Bennett: “I wouldn’t offer him anything to stay. Look, there are
things that Pat espouses that I believe are wrong. And there is a body
language, there is a way in which he speaks that I think is offensive.”

Liberal media outlets are trying to play up Buchanan’s upcoming
defection. In a Sept. 27 Newsweek article, reporter Matt Bai wrote that
while Buchanan isn’t likely to top Perot’s 8 percent in ’96, he would
“draw critical votes from Bush—a prospect that panics Republicans.” He
then quotes Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster who’d like to be
somebody’s Dick Morris, saying, “We need that Buchanan vote, and we’re
not going to get it by ripping him to shreds. We’re going to get it by
respecting his ideas and reminding voters that a vote for Pat Buchanan
is really a vote for Al Gore.” Bai continues by writing that the Reform
Party isn’t at all worried about “helping elect a President Gore.”

Tellingly, Bai doesn’t mention Bill Bradley once in his article.
<>
Al Hunt, writing in the Sept. 9 Wall Street Journal, was also happy to
give credence to Buchanan’s importance in the election. Hunt: “Still,
Mr. Buchanan has a thought-out, sincerely-held, cogent world view that
doesn’t have to be checked and calibrated with consultants and
pollsters. With the exception of John McCain [but of course], that makes
him virtually unique among presidential aspirants. Thus it may well be
that a Buchanan candidacy is the only way these important issues are
going to be addressed in the 2000 race.”

McCain

It’s this kind of baloney that encouraged Joe Conason, in last week’s
New York Observer, to claim, erroneously, that “the Spanish-speaking Mr.
Bush” is trying to coddle Buchanan. That’s plain wrong. It’s true that
the GOP’s dim-witted chairman Jim Nicholson is begging Buchanan to stay,
as is, apparently, Luntz, and several other Republican officeholders.

But they’re in the minority. While Bush did speak to Buchanan in Iowa a
month ago, asking him to remain in the party, once he realized that the
vanity candidate was mentally gone, he shut the door on the issue. Bush,
in The Washington Times interview, said, “I certainly would not offer
anything, except for my desire for him to stay in.” Translation: Go,
stay, I don’t really care at this point. Bush, and his brain trust, have
moved beyond the Buchanan defection, concentrating on the much more
critical threat of Bradley.

Conason, one assumes, given his vigilant defense of the Clintons,
supports Gore and will continue to bash Bush right up till Election Day.
But like the out-of-touch pundits at Time, Newsweek and The New York
Times, Conason wouldn’t know the right wing of the Republican Party from
the right-winger for the Detroit Red Wings.

Unlike boobs like Nicholson, prominent conservative writers are
welcoming the loss of Buchanan. Steve Chapman, in the Sept. 19 Chicago
Tribune, said: “Pro-life voters, fearful of letting Al Gore stack the
Supreme Court with judges loyal to Roe vs. Wade, aren’t going to be
eager to cast their vote for a sure loser.”

In Tuesday's JWR, Jeff Jacoby wrote: “The message is hard to
miss: Republicans aren’t buying what Pat Buchanan is selling. Maybe
that’s because the more this supposed conservative talks, the more he
sounds like a liberal crank. Let him bolt the GOP. The GOP will be
better off without him.”

William Safire concluded his Sept. 16 New York Times column with yet
another take: “So now Democrats root for the nativist Buchanan to get
the Reform nomination just as Republicans root for the liberal Warren
Beatty. Neither major party would allow those would-be spoilers to be
part of the Presidential TV debates; the Reform Party would be doomed to
represent the resentful fringes of left or right. You don’t have to be
Jewish to know that’s not in America’s interest.”

Finally, The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, in the Sept. 27 issue: “A
successful demagogue needs the ferocity of a lion and the cunning of a
fox. Thankfully, Pat Buchanan doesn’t quite measure up. He’s just Pat
the Bunny, hopping around on the fringes of American politics, wiggling
his nose in the air and nibbling away at whatever carrots our political
system offers up for his purposes.”

As this wave of backlash against Buchanan continues in the conservative
press—and let’s not forget Rush Limbaugh, who’s solidly behind Bush—the
laggards in the Republican Party will realize that they’re better off
without
him.

JWR contributor "Mugger" -- aka Russ Smith -- is the editor-in-chief and publisher of New York Press. Send your comments to him by clicking here.